


where we'll begin again

by sapphicish



Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, i get this has been done already but...i wanted it to be done AGAIN, julia is bad at taking care of herself WHO is surprised
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-04 09:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18341189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: “This isn't a vacation, PS Budd. When are you coming back?”Weeks after the explosive attempt on her life, The Right Honourable Julia Montague visits David Budd in the hospital.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i woke up and immediately wrote this on samsung notes on my phone in bed and i feel very powerful for it

She visits him when she's allowed. Would visit much sooner, if she was allowed. It's been two weeks and she would come so much sooner if she was allowed. He's unconscious and quiet, a dark splotch in the middle of all the white that burns her eyes. Something is pounding and aching and rattling in her chest to match the nerves that make her pulse flutter tight in her throat, and he is alive, but he doesn't look alive. And that makes all the difference, doesn't it.

There are two guards stationed outside of the room in addition to her new bodyguard, who she'd last seen eyeing a candy bar in the vending machine down the hall. She closes the door behind her, draws the blinds, sits down in the chair next to his bed and breathes. _Breathes._ It isn't something she's had a chance to do a lot of lately and she's glad for it. Not so glad for the circumstances, of course.

Still, her lungs ache. Her left hip feels a disaster when she sits down. She'd woken from an uneasy two-hour sleep in a heavily guarded house with a migraine that drove her to throw up before she could get some dry toast in her and wash it down with water and aspirin.

It's nothing. Nothing she feels is anything compared to him. Compared to how he looks, how he must feel once he wakes up. And he has to. He has to wake up or—

Or she doesn't know what she'll do.

There's no one to watch her, so she leans in and takes his hand, folding her fingers in the spaces between his. They fit perfectly. They always have.

“This isn't a vacation, PS Budd,” she whispers to him, because there's always a thin sliver of suspicion that she's being listened to. “When are you coming back?”

He doesn't answer. She doesn't expect one for many reasons, including the obvious one.

He's in a coma.

He has a tube down his throat.

And it's jarring to see it, really. She'd been warned about it by Kim, had a long talk about his condition on the way here as though all the long talks about his condition beforehand hadn't been enough to get through to her, and yet—

It feels wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong.

Julia breathes in and feels that familiar sting, letting it ground her for a moment. _You can't hear me,_ she thinks. _It doesn't matter. None of this matters. I have things to do, a whole list of things to do, and here I am with you. Be flattered. You complete arse. How dare you. How fucking dare you. You bastard. You're not meant to protect me like this. You aren't meant to be in a hospital like this. Get up. Open your eyes. Anything. Coward. Coward. How dare you almost die for me. How dare you might still end up dying for me._

What she actually says is this:

“You are coming back, aren't you?”

No answer.

“Ma'am,” Someone says behind her. She doesn't think about _him_ saying it, not anymore, not like when she'd had her first proper conversation outside of the hospital and it was with a lanky blond with a different accent and different eyes and different hands but all close enough to make her feel sick when he introduced himself. She's assigned a new bodyguard just like that.

Just like that.

“What?” she says, rubbing her fingers over the back of David's hand. It doesn't matter if her man sees it. It doesn't matter if anyone does. And sure enough, when the silence follows and she looks over a shoulder at him, his face is carefully blank and all he does is give her a curt nod.

“I'm sorry, ma'am, but it's time to go.”

“Already?”

The disappointment stings.

“Yes, ma'am.”

God, she hates how that sounds from anyone else.

“I'll be out in a moment.”

He lingers, the blond man she's spent weeks with. He has a husband and three children and he likes blueberry pastries, and he is not David, and she is so, so sick of him not being David.

“Yes, ma'am,” he says, and goes. She listens to the door close behind him and then looks back to David in the bed, all still and pale and quiet. So quiet. It makes her skin crawl.

The machines beep on and the silence stretches.

Julia leans over him and kisses him on the forehead. _Wake up._ The cheek. _Move your hand. Just a little._ The lips, finally, soft and quick and dry. _Open your eyes._

“I'll come back to see you again soon,” she says with all the certainty she can muster. A promise. A vow. It's what he deserves. It's what she needs. “You had better be awake by then, David.”

Julia takes her sweet time standing. Half because it hurts to and half because she thinks maybe if she draws it out for as long as possible he'll wake up. Open his eyes. Twitch his fingers which are still linked with hers. Like in the movies where someone visits their loved one in the hospital and they might be in a coma and they might be half-dead but they wake up, they wake up just for them, because they feel them and hear them and sense them and want to come back to them.

Anything. Anything at all.

He doesn't, because life isn't a movie.

“Goodbye, David,” she says. Feels herself stop when she's slipping her hand from his, hearing it ring in her head. A hitch in her breath.

 _Goodbye._ It's wrong, it doesn't belong, it's the _wrong word._ Final and cold and—

“No,” she mutters. “I'll...see you later.”

She wants to kiss him again, so she does, even though she hears the door opening again. Fuck it.

When she turns around the blond is standing there, steady and waiting and not at all shocked or disturbed by the sight before him. She does like him, so she hopes she'll keep liking him and he won't fuck it up by trying to talk about it. To anyone.

“After you, ma'am.”

She straightens her back and clears her throat and gathers herself, breathing in, pretending that David is behind her watching her every move instead of in a coma for God knows how much longer. Pretends that his hand is a warm and wonderful weight at the small of her back. _After you, ma'am,_ she imagines him saying it, eyes soft before his face goes blank for the crowds.

Julia steps from the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i haven't watched anything past episode 3 and i like it that way >:)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wasn't going to post a second part originally but then i wrote one right after i published the first chapter and all of you seemed to want a second chapter so i let it sit a few weeks and then finally gave in lmao enjoy!

Julia isn't there when he wakes up. She thinks about it when she's on the phone in the unpleasantly early hours of the morning, listening to them deliver the news as she'd made them promise to do the moment he showed signs of waking, thinks about it while she rushes her way through a cold shower, thinks about it while she dries her hair and dresses and steps into the car. She definitely thinks about it during the drive there, thinks about how she wasn't there to see him blink awake, to hold his hand while he did it so he wouldn't be alone and lost and confused.

Julia isn't one to coddle people. She isn't one to coddle David, either, but she'd like to, because if anyone deserves it it's him – for using himself as a human shield against the blast, for stepping in harm's way without hesitation, for saving her life. For being David. She doesn't think she would have made it if she was the one in the hospital. She doesn't like to think about it at all, but she does, in the dark of the nights where she curls up alone under the sheets, pulled up over her head so that she can close her eyes and pretend the sun is shining bright overhead through the fabric. She pretends that he's there with her, stroking her skin and letting her touch him in turn, feeling the ridges and bumps of his scars, laughing and sharing stories and sweet sentiments the way they did before everything went to hell.

It never lasts long. Julia doesn't have a great imagination, so of course that pretty picture fades into an aching, lonely sensation in her chest and she opens her eyes to the dark and has to breathe through the sudden panic clutching at her ribs like thin, cold fingers. She knows all about stress, PTSD, anxiety, trauma, so on and so forth – it doesn't make it any easier to lie awake through it, trembling and holding onto those tiny, precious breaths. She's not the sort of person to sit around waiting for someone to swoop in and name all the things that might be wrong with her in the wake of the attack. She _is,_ however, the sort of person to push past it and move on. There's no room for that in her life. Certainly not now.

She doesn't go to a therapist because she doesn't have the time or the patience, but she thinks a therapist would say something about survivor's guilt, too.

Fuck therapists.

Once, she passes out in the shower; once, during a meeting a couple of days after she's released from the hospital, her chest grows so tight that she thinks she's having a heart attack and she's cold and sweating by the time she finally manages to stammer out an excuse and make an escape for the loo. She'd closed the stall door behind her, locked it, slid down and pulled her knees to her chest and trembled all over, and when she stood some minutes later she'd almost collapsed again, her legs weak like a newborn kitten's. She returns and no one is the wiser, but her hands don't fully stop shaking until the next morning.

Once, emerging from the hospital for the first time, there had been a crowd, press shouting questions and surrounding her as close as they could get, and as she'd been packed into the car she'd almost wept with relief until she reminded herself that she wasn't alone, that the driver was watching her in the mirror. So, instead, she had pressed her head to the cool glass of the window and squeezed her eyes shut until it hurt, the way that everything else did. 

She wakes up screaming most nights, but it's grown quiet enough that no one else can hear it. The way she likes. She would let _him_ hear it. Let him hear anything and everything, so long as he's here with her, so long as she has a warm body next to her and a hand grabbing at her own and a calloused palm rubbing between her shoulder blades as she comes down from the panic.

It's all just a fantasy, she knows that, but it's the only thing that makes it easier. That's saying a lot when nothing else does, when everything sends this awful hidden part of herself reeling with terror and uncertainty. She spends every morning with a knot in her throat until someone informs her that there's been no change about Budd's condition, ma'am, and are you alright, you're looking a little pale—

 _I'm fine,_ she says, _yes, I'm good,_ she says, _my recovery is on track, and I will not let any of this keep me from continuing on my original path,_ she says, and she almost mentions David that first time in front of all the watching eyes and the wide-eyed faces in the sea of press, her hip aching something awful and her arm still in a cast, the worst of the bruises on her face hidden with layers of foundation and concealer. She almost says, _I have David Budd to thank,_ she almost says...something. Anything.

The words catch in her throat, and she keeps it simple and short and unsentimental instead, the way she knows she should. David would prefer it that way, anyway. It's good. She's doing the right thing, the smart thing, she says all the right words and doesn't draw it out for any longer than necessary and doesn't look back when they yell questions after her like the bunch of unsympathetic vultures they are.

It doesn't make her feel any better, but she pretends it does, because it's what she's good at.

Security is as tight as ever when they arrive at the hospital, and she stumbles when she steps out, her heel caught in the groove of the sidewalk. Callum catches her by the elbow, always just two steps behind her where he belongs as her bodyguard, and she sucks in a breath and then shakes him off. He falls back again without a word of complaint, the way bodyguards do.

She's flanked at what feels like all possible angles by suited men with earpieces and guns hidden under their jackets when they go inside, silent in the elevator and silent when they step out and silent when the doctor informs her that he's awake, stable, and that she'll be allowed to speak with him but only for ten minutes at the most, and she could come back tomorrow if she liked. 

_Ten minutes._ Like that was likely.

Julia looks wordlessly over a shoulder at Callum. He's already settled just outside David's door, hands folded in front of him, strong chin lifting in a half-nod at her when she glances over. “Ma'am.”

“Thank you,” she says, because he deserves that much. He smiles a little, a quick flicker at the corners of his mouth, then looks ahead again, stoic.

Julia's hands are shaking. She thinks her entire body might be shaking, but all the same she opens the door and shuts it behind her as quietly as possible, clammy fingers clenching around the doorknob. She suddenly wants to just stay there forever, frozen, the idea of ever looking up from the floor seeming like an impossible, far-off dream.

She pulls herself together and looks up anyway, because she has to, and because she feels herself being watched. The room is how she remembers it from week to week, except there's a new vase of colorful flowers in the corner with a card trapped between the paws of a miniature teddy bear. She wonders briefly if she would find children's scribble within if she went to read it. Children's scribble next to much nicer writing, maybe that of his ex-wife's.

It would make sense.

Julia swallows, drags her gaze around to the front. He _is_ watching her, quiet and still and alert. And breathing—his chest rises and falls evenly, the beeping from the machines gives her a second clue that he's alive. He's alive.

She closes the distance slowly. It feels surreal, otherworldly, and she listens to the clicking of her heels on the floor like she's having an out-of-body experience, hearing it from outside of the room. She can feel her thoughts all grinding to a halt when she reaches him, when she pulls the chair over and sits down. It's a familiar feeling. The chair is hard and uncomfortable and she's probably sat in it as often as she's sat on her furniture at home the last few weeks, with how frequent her visits have been.

Crawling into the bed with him instead is an awfully tempting idea. There's enough room. She could kick off her heels and join him, right now, consequences be damned. Instead she makes sure the chair and the bed is as close as possible and then she takes his hand, and that feels odd too, because for the first time in a very long time, it moves against her, squeezing weakly when she holds on.

“I didn't bring flowers,” she says. Her voice feels too loud in the silence, making her wince. The inscrutable look in his eyes softens, lightens, the corners of his mouth tugging upwards. The knot in her stomach unravels so quickly that it makes her head spin.

“All's forgiven.” It comes out of him very slowly, his voice a bland rasp so quiet that she has to lean in to hear and almost regrets it because of how it makes her feel, this overwhelming feeling that crashes into her all at once like she's being drowned, lost at sea with no way out.

Julia presses her lips together, bites down on the inside of her cheek, drops a hand flat against his chest. It's a bad idea, of course. He's solid and warm and she can feel the beating of his heart under her fingers and it makes everything so much realer, so much worse in the way her throat begins to hurt and her eyes begin to sting. “How are you feeling?”

His eyes flutter shut for a moment, and when they open again his fingers are sliding up over hers, holding her hand close to him. “Better now,” he says, meeting her eyes for one long, breathless second, and it's exactly the kind of charming bullshit she would never accept from anyone else. From him, it's so sincere and warm and a little teasing that she feels something inside of her twist and fizzle and melt all at once, dragging an exasperated sigh from her. Better than the alternative, which would be to well and truly start crying.

“ _Really,_ David.”

“Really, ma'am. I've felt worse. But the drugs help.”

Julia snorts. “Lucky sod.” She's leaning down before she can stop it, but she does freeze inches away from his mouth, the uncertainty swelling to a tide that threatens to wash over her. She's on her way to pulling back again—this isn't the time or the place, the door is unlocked, they haven't _talked_ —when he lifts an arm and pulls her in, his hand tremulous at the small of her back.

They kiss there, in the space they join together, her leaning down and him leaning up until their mouths meet, and they've shared kisses that weren't the precursor to something more before, albeit very rarely, but even this is _different._ It yanks mercilessly at something deep inside of her and sends one part of her reeling while all the other parts relax, something sad and starved sated at last.

 _He's alive,_ Julia thinks, and for first time in a long time, she feels almost completely at peace.

It doesn't last, not even for a full minute because then her mind is working again, thinking about the near future and about the far future and about _everything,_ but it's enough. For now.

She knows, reasonably, that in around—she glances at the clock—seven more minutes, the door will open and someone will demand for her to get out and she'll go, because arguing to stay would be ridiculous. She knows that this will end, that she'll go home, that he'll stay here and she'll curl up in bed and probably have a good, long cry, because if there's anything she deserves it's that, even though the idea makes her sick to her stomach in the present. Especially the _being alone._

It doesn't matter.

Right now, David's fingers are trailing through her hair, and right now he's awake and breathing softly beneath her when she moves in close enough to press her head to his chest, and right now she can breathe, and right now her mind is so blissfully calm that she knows she might very well have a breakdown once she gets home and she can't even bother caring about it. Not now, not here.

“Thank you,” she says distantly, “for saving my life. But don't do it again.”

Beneath her, his chest thrums with quiet laughter. “I wasn't planning on it.”

“We'll have to talk, you know.” Julia tips her chin up against his chest to meet his eyes. “Thoroughly. Soon.”

“The doctors say I could be getting out within the week.”

Julia swallows. Within the week. It feels at once like such a short and such a very long time stretching ahead of her. Maybe he sees some doubt in her eyes, because he starts stroking her hair again, gentle and careful like she's the injured one and not the other way around.

“Good,” she says. “That's good.”

They spend the rest of their time in comfortable silence. More than once she thinks of breaking it; more than once she wants to say something, anything, and more than once she stops herself because it isn't the time. Isn't the place. It isn't the place even for this – for the hand-holding, for her head on his chest, for his fingers in her hair. 

When Callum's familiar knock comes at the door – three easy, curt raps on the wood – she pushes down the wave of irritation that threatens to consume her completely, opening her eyes to shoot the door a hard look that she wishes the people behind it could see.

“You should go,” David says. It almost stings – _are you that eager to get rid of me,_ she's about to say, biting and sharp, until she sees the look on his face, soft and warm-eyed all for her. All the instinctive defensiveness drains out of her at once.

“I should,” she agrees, though it comes more reluctantly than she'd like.

Julia lingers there for a moment in the space full of things unsaid, watching him watch her. He's gloriously _David_ even now, unshaven and in a hospital gown, smiling a little at the edges of his mouth and looking up at her like she's something spectacular to behold instead of the other way around.

It's easy to forget they haven't known each other that well at all, or that long; easier to forget the circumstances, easier to forget everything around them.

“Behave, David,” Julia whispers, and dips down to kiss him one last time. “I want you back on your feet, and back with me as soon as possible. Understand?”

“Aye, ma'am,” he says only when she's leaned back to look at him expectantly. His voice holds no small hint of amusement, which ordinarily would annoy her. Instead it brings an odd, cooling sense of relief. Now she knows. Now she knows that he's willing to take these steps with her, despite everything.

Julia clears her throat, straightens and turns away. “The next time I come, I'll be sure to bring a teddy bear,” she says, smiling when she hears his rumbling laughter behind her, something that only ends when it's muffled and then shut out altogether by the door closing.

Outside, Callum looks at her evenly. “All's well?”

“All's well.”

“Ready to go, then, ma'am?”

Julia breathes in deep. Around her, the air feels lighter, no longer like steel weighing on her shoulders. It's a change. Every other time she'd come in and out of this hospital she'd felt like gagging on the sterility of it, the sight of David so lifeless in that awful bed, knowing that she had been the one who got to leave, to recover quick and easy enough albeit with many lingering aches and pains and night terrors, and he had to stay. _I want you right beside me,_ she'd said. She meant it still, and looking at him then she'd felt like she'd never meant it quite as much, with how easily he makes her feel _good_ again, like everything is—not _right,_ but that it will be eventually, no matter what.

She has a meeting with Roger in an hour that she's dreading, and the start of a migraine tugs at even the thought of it, and she's still going to be going home alone at the end of the day, thinking about David, unable to sleep, tossing and turning and having nightmares in those precious hours she does manage to fall asleep. But there's more now, more to all of it, David's smile and the warmth of his hand and the gleam in his eyes and the feeling of his mouth on her own regardless of who might barge in and see it.

There's a future. There's a light at the end of the tunnel.

There's hope.

“Yes,” Julia says, feeling the certainty of it reverberate in her voice. “I'm ready.”


End file.
